This bill is as radical as it is revolutionary, it is a bad bill for Britain and it is a bill that Parliament must come together to reject in almost its entirety. The Government have clearly taken their budget debacle and leapt headfirst into the first grandiose scheme that would knock it off of the front pages for a few days. The rationale for the Cornish Assembly is based on a poll that is some ten years old and does not include any way of verifying the decade old poll's accuracy today. If the Government wants to introduce regional devolution then the will of those people affected must be tested in a referendum and other regions must be offered reciprocal deals.

The Prime Minister is so eager for power, and to move on from the budget debacle, that she would run roughshod over her own manifesto. If I may quote directly from the document itself:

ConstitutionLabour will abolish the House of Lords and implement a fully-elected Senate based broadly upon the principles agreed during the last Parliament by the cross-party ‘doughnut club,’ of which the present Prime Minister was a member.

Any constitutional change beyond that to which we have committed in our manifesto (which is therefore subject to the Salisbury convention) would be approved by a public referendum, in which a plurality of voters in each of the United Kingdom’s four constituent countries would need to signal approval.

This revolutionary legislation not only includes a scope well beyond the Lords Reforms that were agreed before but runs counter to the express wishes of a clear majority of the country. The vast majority of MPs were elected on Conservative manifesto, which did not call for any reform of the majority of these areas, and Labour manifesto, that expressly ruled out constitutional changes without a positive referendum endorsement from all four nations. The Prime Minister must be desperate to keep the Liberal Democrats on side if she would do so at the cost of her promises to voters and the will of her own MPs.

The Liberal Democrats have clearly learned a lot from 2011, shame they learned the wrong lessons. When the people publicly endorsed First Past the Post that should have been the end of the discussion, instead the Lib Dems have decided to come back with a new voting system and simply prevent the people from having the conversation at all. The Lib Dems are so desperate for electoral reform come what may that they have forgotten how to be liberal AND how to be democrats.

In the last general election Labour promised that changes to the constitution would be subject to a popular referendum - adding yet another item to the ever-growing list of Labour's broken promises. In their election manifesto, Labour promised to submit all constitutional changes outside of their proposed elected upper house to a referendum, by which the British people would be able to determine their country's future. Unsurprisingly they've now broken that promise, with the Government proposing multiple constitutional changes via its Radical Reform Bill that was introduced to Parliament this morning. The Government wants to change the shape of our political institutions, how we vote for our elected representatives, and who can vote for them - and they couldn't care less about what you think about it. If there's two things Labour knows how to do well, it's breaking their promises and silencing the British people.

The Government has chosen this moment to attempt to ram their constitutional reforms through Parliament because they are eager to re-write the rule to their political advantage and take attention away from the budget disaster. The Government is facing a myriad of crises: they've been forced to withdraw their budget, they've been lambasted for their plans to allow indefinite amnesty of illegal immigrants, and they seem to have no coherent strategy on addressing the threat of Russian aggression. With so much on their plate, with so many immediate issues to handle, the Government has bizarrely chosen to switch tack and focus their efforts on a radical experiment to reshape Britain how they see fit.

There are many reasons the Government has decided to introduce its Radical Reform Bill, and none of them have anything to do with the wellbeing of Britain.

The Great Reform Bill is a fantastic piece of legislation that works to address many of the most glaring injustices and greatest anachronisms within our democracy, fixing the flaws that have made politics alienating and out of touch, ensuring that politics is actually truly meaningfully democratic. It delivers on many key pledges that this coalition made to the British people - including votes at 16, a permanent right to vote for British expats, and electoral reform at the local level. These reforms have escaped much of the media furor but are common-sense reforms that make local, devolved and national governments truly effective. They deliver on Liberal Democrat manifesto commitments and were agreed to within the coalition agreement.

Graham Adiputera (Lib Dem - Sutton and Cheam)
Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Climate Change
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Technology

British politics is broken. We have a political system that benefits the political class and their cronies, whether that be our outdated system of elections, an unelected second chamber of Parliament or a completely centralised politics. The Reform Bill delivers the changes that are sorely needed and delivers the many aspects of both Liberal Democrat and Labour policies proposed at the General Election. With this Bill we will ensure that British politics works for the British people not the political elite.

The Conservatives have lambasted the Reform Bill as radical and revolutionary, and to be quite honest they're not wrong on that front - the Reform Bill provides radical solutions to the problems our politics faces. Throughout history the Conservative Party have been the obstruction to true change for our country, they opposed giving women the right to vote, they opposed devolution to Scotland and Wales not just once but twice, and now they oppose these reforms - the Conservatives sole aim in politics is to protect their own base of power, and reforming British political institutions will never be acceptable to them. You only need to look at Dylan Macmillan for proof, when exiled from the Conservatives he was a vocal proponent for Lords Reform, the moment he became leader of the Conservatives and at the mercy of his part's donors he ran away from his principles as so many Conservative leaders have.

Extending the vote for sixteen year olds is a landmark moment for the health of our democracy. The Liberal Democrats have long been advocated of extending the right to vote to sixteen year olds and I am proud that it is included in the Reform Bill. By extending the right to vote we will be encouraging the next generation to become more involved in politics in an age with political engagement and leadership will be essential to tackling the major political issues of the future.

I think this reform bill is a much-needed, an urgently needed at that, cure for the malaise that inflicts British politics. These ideas have long been in the public domain, have long been discussed, have long been scrutinised - and there is no constitutional proposal that is more radical, more unprecedented, than the extreme Conservative Party suggestion that only referendums provide the people the chance to get involved. That is a very extreme idea. But let us stop pretending that these ideas are somehow radical or are being developed in a partisan way. They are being implemented and pursued in a considered and cross-party way that if anything exceeds how most prior constitutional reforms were implemented. After all, the leader of the Opposition wrote a big chunk of this bill. It's far more of a cross-party effort than most prior constitutional reforms.

Graham Adiputera (Lib Dem - Sutton and Cheam)
Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Climate Change
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Technology

The idea that I oppose the radical reform bill because I am u-turning on my desire for Lords' Reform is laughable. I oppose the radical reform bill because it overturns the entire British constitution at once without any thought, consultation, or even consideration for the issues raised. What this bill would enforce upon the British people, without their consent, would be the end of stable Government pure and simple. If you think the chaos of this government is bad then just wait until the first election under this system where current polling suggests that the smallest government would be made up of four parties and therefore at least four different manifestos. The British people have seen how quickly Labour and the Liberal Democrats have abandoned their manifestos after the last election, I doubt they'd want to reach a situation where there were four, five, or even six parties all abandoning pledges just to get into government.

The radical reform bill is poorly thought out, breaks numerous manifesto commitments, and drives a horse and cart straight through the British constitution leaving it in tatters. The Conservative Party have always stood up for principled and evolutionary change to the constitution rather than the total overhaul of our distinctly British democracy and so we will be opposing the bill in the Commons. Over the coming days the Conservative Party, as a responsible opposition, shall be working with parties across the Commons to come up with common sense amendments to address issues like the public mandate for change and other such issues this travesty of a bill presents.

The fact that Labour can't even sell these proposals to their own backbenchers, let alone the people, shows that this latest blunder is little more than an attempt to keep the Liberal Democrats on side. After the budget catastrophe the Government should be trying to pass a Finance Bill, not wasting its already very depleted political capital on experiments such as this.

The Reform Bill has many merits and the Parliamentary Labour Party are keen to see a reforming, progressive piece of legislation through the House of Commons. Constitutional issues are rarely black and white and it is absolutely understandable that different MPs, representing their constituents, believe in a range of models for helping rebuild trust in our political system. I will be putting forward a motion to amend the Bill to allow for a public referendum on the contents, as this is a core policy for many Labour MPs. I hope this amendment, led by these Labour MPs, will be welcomed by the Government so that the Labour Party can continue to unite in pressing through this important, progressive reform.

Game calendar

Scottish Referendum

Polls

Politics UK

Meta

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.